Roberto R. Treviño

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Roberto R. Treviño | Facing Jim Crow: Catholic Sisters and the "Mexican Problem" in Texas | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.2 | The History Cooperative

FACING JIM CROW: CATHOLIC SISTERS AND THE "MEXICAN PROBLEM" IN TEXAS

This essay examines Catholic nuns' racial attitudes towards Mexicans and how these views affected their social ministry in early- to mid-twentieth-century Texas. Focusing on the experiences of the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence of San Antonio, the author argues that the nuns were precursors of social change who reflected both racial idealism and animosity as they challenged the Jim Crowism that shackled the lives of Mexican Catholics.

Este artículo analiza las actitudes raciales de monjas católicas respecto a la población méxico-tejana y su impacto en el servicio social y religioso que desarrollaron entre ese pueblo durante la primera mitad del siglo veinte. Centrado en la experiencia de la Congregación de la Divina Providencia de San Antonio, el autor propone que las monjas eran precursoras de cambios sociales y que sus actitudes reflejaban una mezcla de posiciones idealistas y racistas en su lucha contra la discriminación social que sufrían los mexicanos católicos.

"THEY CAME, HOPEFUL of finding respect and love," a Catholic priest lamented in early twentieth-century Houston, "but there is no love—only contempt and hatred." Father Esteban de Anta was referring to the thousands of Mexican immigrants who inundated Texas and the American Southwest searching for a better life. As pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Houston's only Mexican parish in the early 1910s, Father de Anta was well acquainted with conditions among Mexican Catholics. "'Greasers' they are called and looked down upon and considered as pariahs," he wrote in Extension magazine.¹

To some people today, de Anta's words may sound unduly harsh and exaggerated. Perhaps the good father did exaggerate, somewhat. He was, after all, writing in the fund-raising magazine of the Catholic Church Extension Society, a mission-aid society that collected money to help build chapels in needy Mexican communities. But, how accurate were the cleric's remarks about the social status of Texas Mexicans? What does history tell us? In fact, in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were commonly called "greasers" and other degrading names and, for the most part, they were considered social outcasts.² If Reverend de Anta pulled at his readers' heartstrings to elicit their contributions, his portrayal of the Mexicans' status nonetheless accurately reflected their historical reality. In Jim Crow Texas, as another cleric pointed out, "Americans assume[d] an attitude towards them, sometimes more hostile and unfriendly than towards the poor Negro."³ In a time when most Americans made no distinction between native-born Mexican Americans and newly arrived Mexican immigrants, Jim Crow attitudes and practices shackled the aspirations of both groups, regardless of nativity or citizenship.

The mention of Jim Crow evokes images of the Deep South and white-over-black racism. But white racism has also played a prominent role in the history of Mexican Americans in Texas and the Southwest, as scholars and social commentators have amply documented. "When Mexican sharecroppers settled in central Texas farm communities, they were subject to segregation in schools, neighborhoods, churches, and public facilities, as were more permanently settled African Americans in the Jim Crow South, including Texas," historian Neil Foley stated. Similarly, historian Arnoldo De León wrote that "Jim Crow laws and attitudes" helped to keep Texas Mexicans segregated, civically isolated, and politically powerless. These observations echo a 1930s study that found Mexicans in San Antonio were "segregated from the rest of the community almost as effectively as the Negro."⁴ Novelist John Rechy summed it up by recalling the commonplace restaurant signs he saw in Texas that read: "WE DO NOT SERVE MEXICANS, NIGGERS, OR DOGS." Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas had long struggled against a society bent on preserving white privilege; it was indeed a place, as Rechy wrote, where "Jim Crow Wears a Sombrero."⁵

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